Original Concepts of RK That May Have Influenced the Current Designs

This always made me think, if you look back at Sparkster's original design Blaster, do you think that Blaster's serious appearance was the main base for Axel Gear's design?

And what about the second design for Blaster? It kinda looks like a cross design with RKA Sparkster and 2010 Sparkster. Is Blaster's second design being the base for Sparkster's 2010 appearance or is it coincidental?

It could be that the more serious design of "Blaster" was later used for Axel Gear. Sparkster/Blaster was supposed to shoot missiles from his Jet Pack which was scrapped during the progress of development of Rocket Knight Adventures, but if you take a closer look at the final fight with Axel Gear in the exact same game you'll notice that he has the ability to shoot homing missiles at Sparkster. So my best guess is that they haven't really "scrapped" the idea but were giving these abilities to Axel Gear instead. It could have been that, during some test runs, the game was starting to run slower or was freezing whenever they tried to use the homing missiles with Sparkster/Blaster, so they had no other choice but to scrap it for Sparkster/Blaster. This is just a theory of mine though.

About the second design for Sparkster/Blaster and the current design of Rocket Knight (2010)... I think this is really just a big coincidence. Art Styles tend to have similarities with other Art Styles, so I wouldn't think too much about it. But it could be that Tomm Hulett took a look at the Archives of Konami and saw some of the prototype works. He WAS working for Konami for some years, after all, so the possibility that he had access to these old concepts should be taken in consideration as well.